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Polish police received information about a possible attack on Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, prompting an emergency meeting of security services on Sunday, an Interior Ministry spokeswoman said.
"Following information received by the Polish Police regarding a possible attack on Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, Interior Minister, Marcin Kierwiński, and the Minister-Coordinator of Special Services, Tomasz Siemoniak, has ordered action to be taken in this matter,” spokeswoman Karolina Galecka wrote on X.
The warning comes as Poland is on high alert after a wave of school violence, and as European intelligence agencies say, Russia is stepping up efforts to assassinate defense industry figures.
Polish officials have not said who may be behind the possible attack.
"A meeting will be held today at 11:00 a.m. at the Internal Security Agency’s (ABW) Counter-Terrorism Centre," Galecka wrote.
Representatives of the police, the State Protection Service, which guards senior officials, and the Internal Security Agency were due to attend, according to the Polish news agency PAP.
Jacek Dobrzynski, spokesperson for the minister coordinating special services, told PAP he could not provide details about the meeting and that media would be notified if officials held a briefing.
Separately, officials from five European intelligence agencies told the Financial Times (FT) that Russia is stepping up efforts to assassinate European defense executives, as the Kremlin expands sabotage and "hybrid" operations to weaken support for Ukraine.
"The threat level has risen in Europe. To property but also to people," a senior European intelligence official said.
"Russia is engaged in the deliberate planning of acts of violence against individuals by state or state-controlled actors," Sinan Selen, head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, told lawmakers Monday.
"We are observing a further development of these actions in terms of the targets, the methods and the actors involved, including the use of organized crime structures," he added.
Responsibility for such plots largely falls to Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, which is working more closely with organized crime groups and splitting tasks between cells, intelligence sources told the FT.
"The main goal from the Russian perspective is still psychological," an intelligence official said, noting, "Just by making people feel they might be a target, they are having their effect. They want individuals to think twice before doing business with Ukraine."
Claudine Fry, a partner at security firm Control Risks, said assassination risks were "definitely an issue that is much higher on the radar now."
"We are seeing increased interest in trying to understand how seriously to take the threat to executives and how to take active steps towards managing that threat," she said.
European defense executives have been on high alert since early 2024, when U.S. and German intelligence uncovered a Russian plot against Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger.
The Kremlin has not commented on the report, and Polish authorities have not linked the threat against Tusk to any country.
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